Day one of sealing passes of peacefully

Day one of sealing passes of peacefully
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 18: The sealing squads of the Delhi Government faced no resistance today as they went about sealing `polluting industries' as per Supreme Court's instructions in North West Delhi. Many factory owners, who faced closure, had removed machinery from their premises.

The smell of the machines was fresh and the ground still wet in a number of factories even as the sealing squads entered them. At Trinagar when the sealing squad entered the factory premises, they found just an empty hall. ``The machinery were being removed upto this morning,'' one of the neighbours said.

Sealing squads comprising of MCD, Delhi Vidyut Board, Jal Board and DDA officials apart from the SDMs had to haggle with many as they went around looking for the premises in the list given to them. In many places, heated arguments on whether a particular type of industry were supposed to be sealed took place and, in more cases than one, factory owners were successful in convincing the sealing squads to spare their particular unit on some technicality or the other.

At Pawan Plastic in Trinagar, a unit manufacturing plastic grains, R.K.Garg the unit owner requested that he be exempted as his unit made raw materials used in the footwear industry. ``It has been clearly mentioned that the footwear industry will not be touched,'' said Garg. After a great deal of arguing, the team led by a MCD official finally relented. ``We shall confirm and come back tomorrow,'' they said.

The morale of the residents was bolstered by the visit of ex-chief ministers of Delhi, Madan Lal Khurana and Sahib Singh Verma. The two politicians reportedly had visited the area and assured factory owners that no sealings other than of those listed will be done. Not surprisingly the names of politicians were invoked repeatedly wherever the sealing team went.

The first phase of sealing aims to seal 32,000 units in all, out of which 8,000 are in north west Delhi. Today, Rohini, Trinagar, Kanhaiya Nagar and Narang Nagar were targeted by 46 teams comprising of various officials of government departments.

Earlier, the categories of industries to be closed had been whittled down to 27 from the original list of 83 meant for sealing. The order of the nodal agency however makes it clear that the other categories would be sealed too and that this was just the first phase.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Manufacturers Federation in a fax termed the whittling down of the list as a tactic to divide the industries, ``as the nodal agency is incompetent in closing all industries at one go and so it is closing them in separate areas and in separate rounds,'' the release said.